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The Reckoning, Rolling Stone

AUGUST 2, 2012
Acrylic and charcoal on board, 26" x 18"

For the current issue of Rolling Stone I was asked to do a spread illustration for an article titled "The Reckoning", about the scary new math pointing at an accelerating climate change.   Wildfires, stronger Summer storms, and broken temperature records are some of the most recent indicators.  The article, written by Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, is online here.  It has been circulated by various environmental groups and bands like Radiohead, so the story has received a lot of attention.   Thanks to Joe Hutchinson at Rolling Stone for the assignment, some of the sketches and process are below.
"If the pictures of those towering wildfires in Colorado haven't convinced you, or the size of your AC bill this summer, here are some hard numbers about climate change: June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United States. That followed the warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere – the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average, the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe.  Meteorologists reported that this spring was the warmest ever recorded for our nation – in fact, it crushed the old record by so much that it represented the "largest temperature departure from average of any season on record." The same week, Saudi authorities reported that it had rained in Mecca despite a temperature of 109 degrees, the hottest downpour in the planet's history."

 
Some of the various sketches.

Working on the final painting, I try to work outdoors when I can.

Detail 1

Detail 2

Magazine layout

© 2024 Edel Rodriguez